Windows Azure news

Hi there! Last week, two quite important things happened regarding Kentico CMS and Windows Azure. In this post I’m going to describe both of them.

Windows Azure SDK 1.8

On 23th October, Microsoft released Windows Azure SDK 1.8. Of course, we have tested Kentico CMS version 7 with this latest version. I can confirm that Kentico CMS 7 supports this version of SDK without any modifications needed. We didn‘t find any issues with this SDK during our testing.

Kentico CMS in Windows Azure websites

The second interesting news is that Kentico CMS is now listed in the official gallery of Windows Azure websites. It means that you now have three options how you can run a Kentico CMS project in Windows Azure.

The first option is to install Kentico CMS as a Windows Azure project type using the Kentico installer on your local machine. After you install it, you will deploy Kentico CMS as a cloud service to Windows Azure. This option is available from Kentico CMS version 6.

The second option is to use Kentico CMS in the form of software as a service. This service is called Kentico+ and in this case, we manage the whole Azure deployment for you automatically, you just develop your website. To find out more about Kentico+, please go to www.kentico.com/plus.

The third option, the new one, is the ability to install Kentico CMS as Windows Azure website. This is a quite new Windows Azure service, which enables you to install your web applications to Windows Azure very easily. The Windows Azure websites are in CTP (community technical preview) so you first need to request access to it. Then, after the Windows Azure team approves your request, you can go to the portal and create a new Windows Azure website.

After this, you can either go with your own package or you can choose from the Application gallery. When you open the gallery you will find Kentico CMS listed there.

After you choose Kentico, you just install the database and you are ready to use it.

Currently, you can install only Kentico CMS 6 SP1 from the Application gallery. We are now working on releasing a package for Kentico CMS version 7. This should be done until the end of November.